10/02/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 275)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 275

Date: 10/02/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: Home studio in Clinton, WA (Whidbey Island)

Notes:

Yesterday my friend and musical colleague Jacob Zimmerman and I gave a demonstration on the music of Roscoe Mitchell at Cornish College of the Arts.  Among many topics discussed was the strong prescense of Roscoe’s own saxophone technique in his composition.  Today I decided to work with this theme, and composed a short series of pitches intended to be improvised on and selected directly from the page.  Each of these pitches were played in the left hand only.  In the right hand I maintained a continuous “walking” trill with my index and middle fingers on the F clutch key.  

Because I was limited to working with fingerings in the left hand only, I used alternate fingerings in addition to traditional fingerings to allow for more chromatic pitches.  The trilling in the right hand added a fast wobbling that simulated a vibrato.  Because of the F clutch key being trilled in the right hand there were specific pitches that would become trilled if I were to play them.  I avoided these until about :45 into the improvisation, and then began intermittently incorporating them into the single pitch melodies.  The trilled pitches were as follows:

G>F#, G#>F#, B>A#, G>F# (middle octave), G#>F# (middle octave), B>A# (middle octave), G>F# (altissimo octave).

Overall I used wider, more dissonant intervals but there is some smaller, step-wise motion in the improvisation as well as some altissimo register notes, but these were used more infrequently.  I used aggressive articulation and a quiet to medium-loud level of volume throughout.  The pitch series improvised off of was as follows:

A, Eb, C, C#, F, D*, Eb, C, E*, Bb, D, C#, Eb, A, D*, C, A, Bb, C#

The * denotes alternate fingering. 

D* Palm D key only

Eb* Palm D and Eb keys only

E* Palm F key only

-Neil

The image “The subway” accompanying today’s post by Jose Clemente Orozco (1928).

10/01/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 274)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 274

Date: 10/01/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: Main performance hall at Chief Sealth High School

Notes:

For the third consecutive Tuesday in a now I was back in the main performance hall at Chief Sealth High School in West Seattle.  My current reed allowed for a very precise attack, particularly with a hard, swiping action, and I decided to center today’s improvisation around this technique and use the reverent hall to accentuate it.  I would flood the horn with air, and at virtually the same moment gently squeeze in my embouchure and smudge out the air flow with a quick application of my tongue.  This is similar to placing your hand over a vacuum cleaner hose and then pull it immediately away.  The pressure pulls my tongue in and then I almost have to force it away.   This is done very rapidly, and works the best when playing a single fingering, and at the moment the tongue touches the reed I move to an alternate fingering or unrelated pitch.  The end result is a push and pull effect that almost sounds like a series of pitches played in reverse.

During this improvisation I found that the room was the most responsive when moving between a traditional fingering into a two-toned cluster fingering.  However I would only let one of the tones in the cluster speak at a time.  Because the clusters can either hold two pitches at once or allow for isolation on either note, the motion of swiping the reed seems to pull the sound down or up towards the final pitch in an extremely fast bend.  This is a technique I’ve worked with extensively over the past two years.  Ab Concert was an absolute center of action during this piece.  I mainly pivoted around this pitch and focused heavily on it while playing.  The finger action used to accentuate this Ab was as follows:

Initial attack: (Left Hand) 1-2, Octave, Low Bb.  Articulate this pitch with the tongue in a legato style.

Final attack: (Left Hand) 1-2, Octave, Low Bb // (Right Hand) 1-2, Low Eb key.   Finger this at the moment the tongue is Applied.  Then immediately pull away the tongue.

-Neil

The image “Self Portrait” accompanying today’s post by Horst Janssen.

09/30/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 273)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 273

Date: 09/30/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: A room in my childhood home.

Notes:

The morning I was at my childhood house in Edmonds, practicing between my commitments for the day.  We grew up across the street from an elementary school, the same school I went to as a kid.   As with all children, one of my strongest memories was the liberating feeling in my body and soul at recess time.  The playground was on the other side of the street from our house, and every day as a child I would explore my adolescent world and grow on this playground, feeling the fresh air and weather on me.  But unlike other kids I always felt the comfort of being able to see my house while playing.  This made my home all the more special–even the seasons felt like a part of my house.  Playing in the maple leaves, running in the rain or kicking a ball around the pavement with my house in the foreground made it feel like my home was the world.  

By chance today I happened to begin recording right when the kids were let out for recess.  No matter how many years pass or how the world changes the joyful sounds of kids at play, their chatter, hollering and screaming from across the street stays the same.  I recorded two pieces today, and in trying to capture this amazing nostalgic feeling my first improvisation was good, but the spirit of it wasn’t in there.  I decided to record again, this time taking in what was around me–an open window in my mom’s house facing the street and the playground–endless little kids running around in the Fall air that’s now growing colder–the wind blowing.  I recorded this piece towards the end of recess and the bell telling the kids to line up for class can be hear ringing in the recording.  The kids kept on playing, like we all used to do.  And eventually their chatter gets quieter as they formed their little lines next to the building.

In this piece I wanted to compliment the environment outside the window.  Cars were driving by and the wind was blowing a bit.  I used very simple melodic figures in G major: 3-2-1— //  3-5—–3-2-1—–, with wide, breathy vibrato.

-Neil

The image “(Untitled) People In Trees” accompanying today’s post by David Korty (2003).

09/29/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 272)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 272

Date: 09/29/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: Home studio in Clinton, WA (Whidbey Island)

Notes:

This morning I spent some time working with two sound clusters, each with tones approximately a half step apart.  They contained (in the tenor key of Bb) the pitches C/C (quarter step sharp) and A/Bb.  After alternating between these two chords for some time, I decided to incorporate them into larger combinations of chords, single pitched microtones and tempered pitches.  These combinations created amazing sound colors with very evocative moods.  I eventually decided to turn these sounds into more melodic cycles that tried to balance melody, harmony and rhythm into interesting combinations.  I felt that this improvisation almost had a dance-like quality to it, with lightly churning rhythms that sometimes held steady or would morph into new patterns and cycles.  

I tried to pace this improvisation in such a way that these melodic, harmonic and rhythmic cycles had forward momentum at all times.  I wanted to weave the sounds together into a labyrinth that seemed to have no beginning or end, just motion.  This accounted for the abrupt ending at the piece’s conclusion.  The interruption of established motives also became a critical element of this piece.  Before recording I practiced interrupting steady pulses with new pulse material, and then approached this with melody and harmony.  Again, during this improvisation I tried to use this concept multi-dimensionally, using the broader themes of continuance and interruption to apply to melody, harmony and rhythm simultaneously.

The bulk of this piece was improvised with a few of the figures, namely the opening figure, having been practiced ahead of time.  I used this opening figure as a platform from which to build, adding new pitches, rhythms and ornamentation such as grace notes and trills.  The 3 pitch areas used to build this opening were as follows:

Pitch: Eb (quarter step flat)

(Left Hand) Palm Eb key only, Octave

Pitches: C/C (quarter step sharp) split-tone

(Left Hand) 2, Octave, Low B // (Right Hand) 1-2

Pitches: A/Bb

(Left Hand) 2, Octave, Low B // (Right Hand) 1-2

-Neil

The image “Vindivil” accompanying today’s post by Julio Camino Sanchez (1967).

09/28/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 271)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 271

Date: 09/28/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: Home studio in Clinton, WA (Whidbey Island)

Notes:

Yesterday I worked with taking internal pitches inside a multiphonic chord and using those notes as the melodic material for improvising.  Today I buried melodic material inside of two chord shapes.  This melodic material was improvised, and I used the two chord shapes as springboards for exploring variation in sound while singing a melodic tone within them.  Chord Shape 1 and Chord Shape 2 are very similar, but Chord Shape 1 uses tones in the mid range and is more sparsely filled in.  Chord Shape 2 is much more full, denser in sound quality and uses tones in the lower register.  During much of the improvisation I would sing a pitch with Chord shape 1 and then continue to hold that same pitch while then moving on to the fingering in Chord shape 2.  An example of this can be heard at (:12) where I sang a Concert B with Chord Shape 1, and at (:15)  moved to Chord Shape 2.  The difference is subtle, and I thought of this motion as an orchestrational move, with the initial sound being being gently filled in and rounded out by the second. 

During this improvisation it was exciting for me to hear that sometimes a major chord would ring out in Chord Shape 1, but would become some other slightly different quality chord altogether when entering into Chord Shape 2.  This was despite the fact that both chords had very similar internal pitches.  As the piece progressed, I began singing different pitches from Chord Shape 1 to Chord Shape 2 to further explore internal clusters of sound and combinations of harmonic colors. 

There was also a bit of mystical sound in this improvisation.  When singing a Concert F# with chord Shape 1, I clearly heard my own voice singing a B above it.  This was not a different tone, but to my ears clearly a 2nd tone coming out of the horn with my own vocal qualities.  I’ve experienced similar occurrences like this before while singing into the horn but never a second tone so plainly stated with the same sound as my voice.  This can be heard, at least to my ears, at :21-:24 and again from :29-34. While playing the sound was as clear as day to my ears.

The fingerings used for each chord shape were as follows:

Chord Shape 1:

(Left Hand) 1-2-3, Low Bb // (Right Hand) 1-3, Low C#, Side F

Chord Shape 2:

(Left Hand) 1-2-3, Low Bb // (Right Hand) 1-3, Low C#

-Neil

The photograph “New York” accompanying today’s post by Helen Levitt (c. 1939).